Women's Prayer Research Articles

Religious Authority in Women’s Mosque (Ummul Mukminin Mosque at Universitas Islam Bandung)

This study spotlights women's religious authority in the Ummul Mukminin Mosque at Universitas Islam Bandung (Unisba). It seeks to investigate how female initiative negotiates with and coexists with existing (and generally male-dominated) religion, as well as the role of women in its re-emergence. In the early twentieth century, a new wave of women's revivalist groups promoted the role of women in public spaces such as mosques and madrasas, spreading new or reinvented forms of religious practice, attire, and interpretation among Muslim women. Furthermore, women with formal education gained access to employment prospects traditionally exclusive to men. Nonetheless, the growth of female religious roles presents both possibilities and barriers. Women's presence and involvement in the mosque are demarcated by general perceptions of women's prayer at home, gender stereotypes, and leadership restrictions on women. Therefore, this paper concerns the struggles of women in the academic community of Unisba to sustain their existence in a male-dominated public environment. According to the findings of this study, women's agency at Unisba elevates its religious authority through building the mosque and organizing the numerous religious events geared primarily at women's empowerment. The qualitative technique employed includes in-depth observation, interviews, and pertinent social media sources.

WOMEN’S ATTENDANCE AT MOSQUES AND THEIR NON-ATTENDANCE IN PAKISTAN, AN APPLIED OVERVIEW

Islam has given the Muslim woman a high status. Honor her as a mother, honor her as a daughter, honor her as a wife, and honor her as a sister .This research deals with the jurisprudential rulings related to women in worship, especially prayer, which is the second pillar of the pillars of Islam, through which the Muslim draws close to his Lord. Women are half of society. She performs the role as a man does in percentage. I presented in this research the definition of the terms related to the subject and the statement that the legitimate discourse is directed to both women and men. Then I dealt with the rulings on women's prayer in mosques with an explanation of the opinions of the jurists in this section, then I mentioned that what should women do in Pakistani society and should they participate in group prayer or not? Should they be involved in matters related to the mosque? And finally the results and recommendations were presented with references and sources.

Development of the structure of the Jamie Nurul Iman Sukaraja Mosque building based on the needs of congregation facilities

<div class="WordSection1"><p>Jamie Nurul Iman Mosque has an area of 208.39 m2, the mosque building currently has limited facilities, such as parking facilities for worshipers who still use the shoulder of the road and ablution facilities and special toilets for men and women must be separated, efforts to complete the facilities for the congregation then it is necessary to develop the building, due to the limited land owned, the development is carried out vertically into three floors. The research was conducted by testing the concrete quality (f'c) of existing columns, beams and slabs, the concrete quality values were obtained sequentially of 13.6 MPa, 11 MPa and 11.2 MPa, then modeled the existing structure using the ETABS application and the results showed that column structure, beams experiencing over strength (O/S) cannot withstand the loads acting on the building, so the existing building structure cannot be used for the development of a new three-story mosque building. The results of the structural analysis of the plan based on SNI obtained the dimensions of the new mosque building with a size of 11.25 meters x 18.8 meters, reinforced concrete structures, non-concrete roofs and enamel domes. The material specifications for the new mosque structure are concrete quality (f'c) 30 MPa, reinforcing steel quality (fy) 400 MPa and 280 MPa (BJTP). Column dimensions are 50x50 cm (first floor), column 40x40 cm (second and third floors), main beam dimensions are 30x60 cm, main beam is 30x50 cm, and child beams are 25x40 cm, floor slab thickness is 15 cm, roof slab is not 13 cm thick. The first floor is equipped with male ablution facilities with an area of 12.51 m2, female ablution facilities with an area of 9.7 m2, toilet facilities with an area of 2.84 m2, and vehicle parking facilities with an area of 99.93 m2. The second floor is equipped with men's prayer facilities with an area of 102.87 m2, book storage facilities with an area of 10.5 m2, logistics facilities with an area of 5.67 m2. The third floor is equipped with women's prayer facilities with an area of 72.9 m2. The budget plan for the construction of a three-story new mosque concrete structure is Rp. 717,990,500.00.</p></div>

INTERTEKSTUALITAS HADIS PEREMPUAN SHALAT BERJAMAAH DI MASJID

This paper examines how to understand hadith in a socio-cultural political context. The author takes the example of the hadith, "Women Pray together in Mosques". The method that the author uses, contextual historical analysis by using the interconnection paradigm. This paper includes a type of literature by referring to Abdul Mustaqim's writing, "The Science of Ma'anil Hadith". The difference between this writing and the writing is, the application of the hadith studied. This writing is interesting and important to study, one of the reasons is, in Ramadan women worshipers in mosques more than in other months, of course it is Caused bythe understanding of the hadith above. Thus, the event gave rise to the Novelty of this writing, to reveal the true meaning of the hadith above. Among the conclusions of this paper : (1) The Importance of Asbabul Wurud, Stilistic, Socio-Historical Approach, Contextual-Redaction Analysis, destination, InterconnectionParadigm (Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology) in understanding hadith. (2) In considering the Socio-Cultural Context of Politics in understanding hadith, there is expected to be a compromise and dialogue between the use of hadith in the context of the past and the current context. (3) There is a hadith that seems mukhtalif about the virtues of women's prayers in the mosque. After being analyzed, it shows that: "There are virtues and wisdoms for women who pray in mosques rather than praying at home, especially in this day and age, while still paying attention to various conditions, conditions and ethics".

Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life by Zev Eleff (review)

Reviewed by: Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life by Zev Eleff Jody Myers Zev Eleff. Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. 311 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009421000404 Zev Eleff has devised a fruitful and interesting way of describing developments within American Orthodox communities and the tensions between the Modern Orthodox and the Orthodox Right. He focuses on the quest for authenticity, a concern that has been central in the United States since the early nineteenth century. Authenticity in religion is a subjective judgement rendered by adherents who believe there is a correct form of beliefs and practices unsullied by financial, [End Page 498] political, and external cultural influences. One might think that for Orthodox Jews conformity to Halakhah determines authenticity. Eleff repeatedly shows, however, that among the Orthodox the charge of inauthenticity is leveled against an innovation when religious authorities deem it problematic but cannot fault the innovation on halakhic grounds; they therefore delegitimize it by declaring it new and contrary to Torah values. The Modern Orthodox, who have sought explicitly to incorporate elements of American liberal culture into their lives, have been most often accused of initiating inauthentic practices even though all Orthodox Jewish communities have developed new rituals, pedagogies, and rules. Furthermore, Eleff argues that scholars have underestimated the extent of American religious culture's influence on Orthodox Judaism, a corrective he demonstrates. Authentically Orthodox is not a historical narrative. It consists of nine case studies, each constituting a separate chapter focusing on a separate post–World War II innovation. Eleff arranges these in three sections. Part 1, "Halakhah and Change," examines kitniyot prohibitions on Passover, the Bat Mitzvah, and the yarmulke. Part 2 deals with the changed image of Orthodoxy in response to a Yeshiva University student team's victory in a College Bowl program on national TV, the creation of toys and games for Haredi children, and the life span of a Modern Orthodox Baltimore yeshiva. Part 3 focuses on "protected male space" through Yeshiva University regulation of co-ed social events, women's engagement in Torah study, and separate women's prayer groups. Each chapter can stand alone. Strictly speaking, none of the innovations were in violation of or required by Halakhah. For example, the case study on the yarmulke shows that in the 1960s American Orthodox Jews began to consider it imperative for men to wear a yarmulke during their waking hours no matter their activity, a position at variance with halakhic codes; they also began to describe the practice as a proud display of Jewish identity—certainly an American interpretation. In the 1980s, when the obligation to wear a yarmulke conflicted with a high school basketball league's rules prohibiting head coverings during playoffs, a yeshiva high school's leaders and supporters mounted a legal challenge. (The importance they attached to the sport is also an obvious sign of Americanization.) In Menora v. Illinois High School Association, the plaintiffs claimed that the prohibition violated the students' First Amendment Free Exercise right, and they won the two-year battle. At about the same time, some Orthodox rabbis and organizations began to oppose the long-standing Jewish community stance that the Constitution's Establishment Clause required strict separation of church and state and precluded state aid to religious schools. For this and related issues, the Orthodox were aligning themselves with Christian conservatives and asserting their distinctive American Orthodox identity. Similarly, in "Mitzvah Merchants and the Creation of an Orthodox Children's Culture," Eleff describes the school contests, trading cards, and toys developed by Orthodox educators that parallel those made by evangelical Christian educators. Both groups share the conviction that children's games should be "practice" for authentically religious adults. Their alternatives to American youth culture nevertheless promote the "American" values of competition, individual achievement, and acquisitiveness. [End Page 499] Eleff's frequent references to American religious history and historiography make his treatment of American Orthodox Judaism especially insightful. For example, in his chapter on Orthodox Bat Mitzvah ceremonies, Eleff builds upon the observation by historian Frederick Jackson Turner (and Shari Rabin's application of it to nineteenth-century American Jews) that there has...

Mukena: A balance between the Indonesian women's prayer dress and the hadiths on the prayer of prophet's wives | موكينا: موازنة بين لباس صلاة المرأة الإندونيسية وأحاديث صفة صلاة أمهات المؤمنين

Mukena is a women's prayer dress in Indonesia. It is well known that the Nine Saints knew her in the fourteenth century AD, but the truth is that Nyai Mukena first knew her in Cirebon. Mokina is considered an Indonesian women's prayer dress. The prayer dress has standards that must be met for the validity of its use in prayer. The mothers of the believers wore the dress of prayer for the Arabs in the past, as mentioned in some narrations. This research analyzes Mukena's hadiths about the dress of the mothers of the believers' prayer.This research is written using the analytical method by searching for hadiths of the prayer dress of the mothers of the believers, looking at the explanation of the hadiths, and analyzing them in the Arabic traditions in Mukena. The method of writing this research is the library method of collecting sources, references and scientific theses related to this research.One of the results of this research is that Mukena is the prayer dress of Indonesian Muslim women. It is the result of Indonesian culture, and is said to be the result of adaptation by the Nine Saints in the revival of Islamic law. The hadiths describing women’s prayer dress indicate that Islamic law has standards in prayer dress, which are not to show a woman’s private parts. Islamic law does not require the form of dress, and all Muslim women must use the local dress that meets the conditions for covering the private parts of the body in prayer.

Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life by Zev Eleff

Reviewed by: Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life by Zev Eleff Michal Raucher (bio) Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life. By Zev Eleff. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. 311 pp. Boundary-policing has become a defining feature of Orthodox Judaism. Social science research reveals the elusiveness yet realness of these boundaries. Historians have largely presented a picture of Orthodoxy in America as a "slide to the right," wherein Orthodox Jews have moved to more stringent religious attitudes over the last century, thus pushing out many of those who might otherwise consider themselves Orthodox. However, amidst a sustained focus on how American Orthodoxy has changed despite an internal narrative of stasis and adherence to a singular tradition, we can now identify more clearly the many ways Orthodoxy has transformed, responded, and divided over the last century. [End Page 435] Authentically Orthodox demonstrates that throughout the twentieth century, Orthodoxy has not shifted its boundaries to the right but moved them in different directions depending on surrounding cultural and religious factors. Zev Eleff takes a broad view in developing a theoretical framework for thinking about how Orthodoxy has defined itself in twentieth-century America. Diving into nine case studies, Eleff argues that authenticity is what determines whether something—peanut oil, Binyan Blocks, or women's prayer groups, for instance—remains within the boundaries of Orthodoxy. Authenticity is subjective, contested, and a moving target. It is a feeling that is determined by "a web of experiences mediated by any number of cultural forces" (3). Those cultural forces come from a combination of what Eleff terms America's "indigenous religious culture" (by which he often means Christianity), European immigrants, and leading Israeli Orthodox rabbis (22). He argues that this quest for authenticity is what defines the boundaries of American Orthodoxy. Eleff illustrates how American Orthodox Jews have dealt with tensions over authenticity. The first case study concerns the permissibility of eating peanut oil on Passover and the influence of Hasidic emigres from Eastern Europe. The second chapter shows how bat mitzvah ceremonies became an accepted practice within Orthodoxy. The third chapter details the authentication of a religious norm for men—wearing a yarmulka in public. Chapter four focuses on how Modern Orthodoxy enlivened their youth with Mighty Mites, the Yeshiva University quiz squad. Next, Eleff looks at how the Orthodox right produced a faith-based youth culture through the Bracha Bee and rabbi trading cards. Chapter six tracks the rise and fall of Yeshivat Rambam, a Modern Orthodox day school in Baltimore that was ultimately rendered inauthentic because of the "religiously inhospitable soil" of Catholicism and the Orthodox right (143). The next three chapters focus on gendered spaces. Chapter seven explores the struggle over female college students at Yeshiva University. Chapter eight tracks the acceptance of women's Talmud study, as Eleff argues that this counterintuitive authenticity was due in large part to the decoupling of women's Talmud study from feminism. Chapter nine shows how this decoupling was not successful among women's prayer groups, which ultimately led to the elites not granting them authenticity. Eleff does important work in rooting Orthodoxy in its American framework. One powerful example of this can be seen in the chapter on peanut oil. Eleff shows how American consumerism of the early twentieth century "purchased more than a modicum of religious authenticity and helped peanut oil secure its foothold in Orthodox homes" (38). However, Hungarian Orthodox opposition to peanut oil ultimately influenced [End Page 436] American Orthodoxy only because of the conservative turn in American Protestantism. Hungarian Orthodoxy was deemed a more authentic expression of Orthodoxy in America because the American religious context had an anti-modernist, separatist, and conservative trend. The concept of authenticity is a productive theoretical approach to thinking about how boundaries are constructed. The case studies highlight the malleability of the concept. What ultimately authenticates a practice or innovation is not whether it is considered in line with Jewish law. Instead, the book reveals that at times the question was whether something was authentically Orthodox, like a bat mitzvah ritual, while at other times, the question was whether Orthodox Jews could be authentically American, like when they...

The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France by Constance Hoffman Berman

Reviewed by: The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France by Constance Hoffman Berman Bruce L. Venarde The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France. By Constance Hoffman Berman. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2018. Pp. xvi, 345. $89.95. ISBN 9780812250107.) With her excellent The White Nuns, Constance Hoffman Berman completes a trilogy of revisionist books on medieval Cistercians. Medieval Agriculture, the Southern French Countryside, and the Early Cistercians (1986), conclusively demonstrated that the standard account of early Cistercians as rural pioneers who settled in and cleared waste wilderness is a myth; The Cistercian Evolution (2000) showed that the Cistercian Order was not a spontaneous institution fully formed in its first decades but was invented gradually across the twelfth century. Here Berman expands upon her article-length work about Cistercian women going back thirty years. Part I asks, "Were There Cistercian Nuns in Medieval Europe?" The answer, debunking more myths of Cistercian history and historiography and looking across Europe, is a resounding "Yes." Berman's examination of official Cistercian statutes and evidence ranging from papal bulls to the nuns' own records means the burden of proof will hereafter be on scholars whose answers to the question have been "Maybe" or even "No." Part II, [End Page 620] almost four times as long, tightens the geographical focus. It decisively demonstrates the "economic success" (p. xi) of Cistercian nunneries in the Archdiocese of Sens—which reached from Champagne in the east to the Ile-de-France in the north and as far west as Chartrain in the west and the middle Loire Valley in the south—from the late twelfth to late thirteenth centuries. Berman examines some 3,000 charters, about half of them published, the others housed in fifteen repositories in four countries. In addition, an account book of ca. 1250 from the abbey of Maubuisson is beautifully analyzed. These documents demonstrate that patrons from bourgeois men and women to Blanche of Castile worked patiently and painstakingly, alone and in concert, to build and endow houses for Cistercian nuns. Subsequently, there is a repeated pattern in which, to quote the description of Cour-Notre-Dame, "charters … show abbesses acquiring lands at a variety of places and carefully consolidating these acquisitions into larger holdings" (p. 208). Cistercian nuns, then, relied on immense entrepreneurial skills to create agricultural and viticultural conglomerates, amass urban patrimonies, and acquire ownership and rights to mills and the industries they underpinned. The emphasis varied according to locale: houses in Champagne, for example, concentrated on vineyards, whereas Saint-Antoine-des-Champs, just outside the twelfth-century walls of Paris, owned scores of properties in the city. In addition to the general conclusions of Parts I and II that "Cistercian nuns were part of the order, and … they were rarely poor or ephemeral" (p. 30), Berman finds "considerable evidence about the activities of the great feudal dominae … of the thirteenth century, who were founders, patrons, and even occasionally abbesses of these communities of nuns" and furthermore that the patrons of Cistercian nuns considered these women's prayers highly effective (p. 223). Part III, "Comparisons and Conclusions," is comprised of one brief chapter, "Cistercian Nuns and Their Predecessors." Here Berman juxtaposes thirteenth-century Cistercian nuns to twelfth-century women's monastic federations, finding a great deal of similarity in both management of properties and recruitment of nuns. In conclusion, Berman notes that all too often, modern historians have taken at face value frequently misogynist medieval accounts of nuns, Cistercian and otherwise. That points to the immense value of this study: it examines thousands of records that show what these women actually did, as opposed to what men said they did (or didn't do). If you are interested in medieval monasticism, the Cistercian Order, or medieval women in general, please read The White Nuns. This long-awaited book does not disappoint. [End Page 621] Bruce L. Venarde University of Pittsburgh Copyright © 2021 The Catholic University of America Press

"ZAWAED SAHIH IBN KHUZAYMAH" ON THE SIX BOOKS IN THE BOOK OF THE "IMAMATE" COLLECTING, STUDYING AND AUTHENTICATING

: I singled out (the appendices of Sahih Ibn Khuzaymah on the six books in the book of the Imamate) by graduating the hadiths of Sahih Ibn Khuzaymah first. Guided by the rules of the principles of takhrej and the sciences of hadith, the words of the imams of this art, their rulings and their investigations. Then it singled out the hadiths that were superfluous in addition to the six books, and legitimized the hadith with its chain of narrators and its text, as in Sahih Ibn Khuzaymah. I singled them out on the hadiths of the six books of the fundamentals, or some of them, based on the most correct of the sayings of the imams such as Al-Haythami, Al-Busairi, Ibn Hajar and Al-Kitani in defining the science of appendages in their books. Then I classified it according to the books and jurisprudence chapters found in the Sahih, and mentioned the book and the chapter under which the excess hadith came under, and mentioned the chapter in its entirety without abbreviation, in order to ensure the jurisprudential, hadith, linguistic and fundamental interest contained in the chapter. The research was divided into an introduction and five chapters. As for the introduction, it mentioned the virtue of the Prophetic Sunnah, the importance of the topic and the reason for choosing it, the research plan and the research method in studying the hadiths of appendices. As for the first topic, it mentioned the additional hadiths on the virtue of congregational prayer. The second topic came in the hadiths of reprimand about the imam of whom you hate to lead. As for the third topic, it contained hadiths about the resurrection of the congregation behind the imam. In the fourth topic, he mentioned the hadiths of excuses for leaving the congregational prayer. She concluded with the fifth topic the hadiths of women's prayer in congregation. The authentic hadiths in the Book of Imamate [249] amounted to two hundred and forty-nine hadiths, the excess of them [21] is twenty-one, ie 8%.

Ḥadith ‘Āishah fī Man’i al-Nisā’ Min al-Masājid; Niqāsh ‘Ulamā’ Bangladesh Ḥaulahu

The Narration of Aisyah (May Allah be pleased with her), is the main focus of the controversy among Bangladeshi scholars on the issue of women's prayer in the mosque. The reason for the dispute is that a group of them issued the ruling based on the phenomenon of the text, and the others explained the ruling of Hadith according to the common situation in the society. If the circumstances change, the ruling will change along with it, because the originality of the issue is permissible, that is proven from other texts. This research adopts an inductive method to survey the Prophetic hadiths that talk about the prayer of women in the Mosque in terms of permissibility and prohibition and analytical method to analyze the difference in opinion of Bangladeshi scholars related to this issue. The research finds that the ruling of Shari’ah is a process that is continuous and permanent. But in necessity and emergency, it has the notion of flexibility and explanation. In the issue of women’s presence in the mosque, they should be allowed if they abide by the suggestions of Prophet (s) and should not if they don’t. So, Prohibition is not from the prophet (s), but it is from their obedience to the ruling.

When Pictures Tell the Story: Imagination and Cognition in an Illustrated Prayer Book

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Clm 935 (the so-called Prayer Book of Hildegard of Bingen, produced in the 1170s in the Rhineland) offered an innovative program for women's prayer. Coupling full-page paintings of sequential biblical scenes with prayers linking the biblical episode to the personal life of the reader, the manuscript offered its user not only an abridged visual Bible, but a new type of support for a complex devotional practice. With complementary but by no means homogeneous possibilities of meaning suggested by the words and images, the reader/viewer was enabled to craft a way of prayer not explicitly guided by rubrics or directions. Focusing on scenes from the Creation series and the Passion narrative, this essay uses some recent insights of neuroscience and cognitive theory to provide a reading of the kind of mental experience likely to be engaged by the reader/viewer of this prayer book.

KALIGRAFI ISLAM PADA DINDING MASJID KUNA CIKONENG ANYER-BANTEN: KAJIAN ARTI DAN FUNGSI

The aim of this paper is to understand the meaning and function of Islamic calligraphy (Arabic calligraphy) on the walls of the Cikoneng ancient mosque, Anyer-Banten. Descriptive with interpretation method is used to make the systematic description. Islamic calligraphy is found on the upper walls of the Cikoneng mosque inside the men's and the women's prayer room, consist a quotations of the Holy Qur'an and the Hadist of the Prophet. The conclusion is that Islamic calligraphy as decoration contains meaning and function through nonverbal language, which is adapted to the social conditions of Cikoneng society in the Dutch era.Tulisan ini bertujuan mengkaji arti dan fungsi kaligrafi Islam (kaligrafi Arab) pada dinding Masjid Cikoneng Anyer-Banten. Metode yang digunakan metode deskriptif dengan interpretasi, yang bertujuan membuat deskripsi secara sistematis. Kaligrafi Islam tersebut ditemukan pada dinding atas masjid Cikoneng di dalam ruang shalat laki-laki dan ruang shalat perempuan, terdiri dari kutipan ayat-ayat Al-Qur’an dan hadist Nabi. Kesimpulan yang diperoleh adalah kaligrafi Islam sebagai ragam hias mengandung arti dan fungsi melalui bahasa nonverbal, yang disesuaikan dengan kondisi sosial masyarakat Cikoneng pada zaman Belanda.

“We Pray for the Death of ‘God”’: Southern African Women in Prayer

IntroductionIn South Africa (North Africans) are being ambushed, burnt, or beaten to death xenophobic attacks that have been sporadic but widespread. The media carry gruesome stories of displaced women and children who originally come from war-tom regions of Africa or economically unstable countries Africa north of Republic of South Africa. Having come to South Africa seeking a different life, their husbands and fathers are killed, and they are displaced again. The reasons given by South African mobs have ranged from the are taking 'their women' (notice objectification of South African women) to foreigners take jobs that rightfully belong to South Africans. Activists and government officials both inside and outside South Africa are working to effect change so that women and children's lives are not at stake. Rape statistics are high South Africa with a woman being raped every two minutes. Police statistics reveal that twenty-seven cases of rape are reported per day province of Western Cape alone.1 Statistically more women than men are unemployed South Africa.2With this context mind, I will consider prayers of women Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA). I realize that task of describing women's prayer ACSA is not only difficult but fact impossible to do an article of this length, for ours is a rich with multiple languages, multiple ways and forms of expressing diverse spiritualities, all of which form totality of ACSA prayer. Women pray song and dance, words and deeds, with traditional African drums and Western guitars, deep silence and tears, meditation and wonder, bright colors and candlelight, around adorned altars and under trees rural places where there are not any church buildings-yet they are all prayer. I will focus on concerns of women's prayers ACSA. Women ACSA pray away rape and pray away xenophobia South Africa brought about by violence of those who believe this land belongs exclusively to them. Women also pray away deeply gendered poverty affecting mostly women and children, and pray away violence against women.Many Christians have believed that violence and poverty are ordained by God. So women essence pray for death of this who ordains this violence and pray to a God who wills peace and affirmation of humanity of women and weak of our communities. Women pray to a life-giving God for all humanity. Women pray to a God who will answer their prayers and not oppose everything that women experience and believe to be divine and life-giving.Contrasting Images of GodNeither progressive South African constitution nor ideals of Ubuntu have modified impact of image of God. Despite equality affirmed constitution, African culture and religion continue to influence daily experience of black women. Although many argue that Ubuntu makes up fabric of African society, and that violence against women and xenophobia are against spirit of Ubuntu, it is clear from statistics offered introduction that Ubuntu has not been effective for women's freedom and equality.3 Ubuntu itself is based on patriarchy and male-dominated cultures Southern Africa, therefore Ubuntu can never liberate women from domination. Mercy Oduyoye correctly argues that in Africa as elsewhere a literal reading of creation narratives has stifled theological content and buried chance for real reflection.4 The literal reading of Genesis has also given to South Africa a who is only like those and for those who were first Africans to interpret Bible-men. Indeed this God-who Anglican Prayer Book of ACSA is male (Father, Almighty, Lord)-has given human men an undue status, where they see themselves as more like God than women are. Women, therefore, should be submissive to men. …

The Visual Image as a Means of Prayer

Silence. Light sifting through the curtain filters across the young woman's face, revealing head and eyes lifted, lips barely parted. Artist Shin-hee Chin's image-woven and stitched from threads and recycled fabric-conveys the mystery, the inner movement, the focused stillness, the silence of prayer. As viewers our response echoes the young woman's intensity: we lean forward, listening the silence, straining know her prayer, perhaps even moved beside her. Yet, with or without our own words, Silence simply is a prayer.Shin-hee Chins Chinmoku: Silence1 was the lead image in Women at a juried online exhibition mounted by the Episcopal Church and the Visual Arts (ECVA), an internet community of visual artists initiated in the year 2000 with the mission to encourage artists and organizations engage the visual arts in the spiritual life of the church.2 Women at Prayer accompanied the work of Anglican Women at Prayer, the international gathering of women held at Virginia Theological Seminary in 2014 that honored women's prayers as an essential presence in the life of the church. The eighty-one ECVA images were projected as a continuous loop before every plenary session, with a number of the plenary speakers referring the images and alluding themes raised in the artwork. And a smaller selection of sixteen images-projected at a slower pace and paired with poetry, song, and prayer-was used for a contemplative prayer service. The conference organizers, including Phoebe Griswold (one of the founders of ECVA), elected integrate these images into the work of the conference out of their conviction that art constitutes a valid form of prayer, and out of their awareness that the prayers offered by images-much like the prayers of women-often go unremarked.The art in Women at Prayer (which is comprised of images of womens prayers but not limited images by women) exemplifies both those convictions. These images stand in that long tradition in the Western church of art used as a means of prayer (what we might term visual prayer). Women at however, enlarges that tradition encompass prayers that embody the lives and experiences of women. Womens prayers have so often remained hidden, although the remarkable response Women at Prayer (indicated by the number of submissions the online exhibition) is evidence that this is a significant omission. In much the same way, visual prayer has passed unremarked in theological discussions and in manuals on prayer. I propose offer a theological model for visual prayer by applying the more general descriptions of prayer the act of praying with images and locate the images from Women at Prayer within the larger Western tradition of visual prayer.We might begin by asking how the work of the artist can be regarded as prayer. Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and herself indefatigable in prayer, complained about a narrow understanding of praying. Since when, she argued, are words the only acceptable form of prayer? She maintained that people pray through the witness of their lives, through the work they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and receive from people.3 Might we not add that artists have prayed through their work and, through their art, offered the faithful a way pray?Theologian Karl Barth, in a small volume titled writes: At this point it is also important remark with Calvin that prayer uttered in a language that we do not understand or which the congregation at prayer does not understand is a mockery God.... We must think and speak in a comprehensible tongue, in a language which has meaning for us.4 Might we include the visual arts as one of those languages that Calvin mentions? In his letters Bishop Serenus written around the year 600, Gregory the Great famously argued that the image was a means by which the unlettered might be taught. As I was finishing this essay I heard a Pentecost sermon in my own church where the preacher, the Reverend Anne Turner, remarked on all the ways that God speaks us. …

Dona Benta's Rosary: Managing Ambiguity in a Brazilian Women's Prayer Group

Dona Benta's Rosary: Managing Ambiguity in a Brazilian Women's Prayer Group

Wilfully Disempowered

Two cases from the UK are discussed to explore why, in the author's terms, women wilfully disempower themselves in religion and spiritual contexts. A case study of a women's prayer group shows how they resist acknowledging their own power or the idea that they are engaging in informal ritual equally important to their male counterparts. Second, qualitative data from a large study of people's beliefs are used to show how women willingly submit to a higher male power through a process of self-denigration. It is argued that the women are making rational, strategic choices in an increasingly secular and patriarchal world.

The Politics of Mysticism: Elisabeth of Spalbeek in Context

Elisabeth of Spalbeek (fl. 1246–1304) was one of the mulieres religiosae who flourished in the Low Countries during the thirteenth century. Although she is known today almost exclusively for her stigmata and her performance of Christ's Passion, I will argue that she provides an exceptional example of the spiritual networking described by scholars such as John Coakley and Anneke Mulder-Bakker. As they have shown, medieval holy women—recluses and anchoresses included—functioned only within tightly woven spiritual networks that connected other mulieres religiosae, sympathetic clerics, and powerful nobles who provided economic and political support in return for the women's prayers and spiritual authority. No one has analyzed Elisabeth's network in this light in part because the chief source for her life—the text written by Abbot Philip of Clairvaux, who visited Elisabeth in 1266/7—omits the proper names of most people surrounding Elisabeth and fails to mention many of the people with whom she must have come in contact. In addition, major documents concerning Elisabeth have, until now, escaped any collective analysis, so we have been unable to place Elisabeth in any context. Through a painstaking review of all the pertinent documents, however, I have succeeded in uncovering Elisabeth's political and spiritual alliances, allowing me to study her in her milieu and to provide a detailed analysis of her possible secular and religious influence. I argue that she was actively engaged in building and extending her own network, and in my consideration of the evidence for this “politics of mysticism,” I offer a perspective on Elisabeth that has led me to reinterpret her role in the last recorded event of her life, the French court battle between Queen Marie of Brabant and the chamberlain Pierre de la Broce.

Aliza Lavie, Tefillat Nashim: Jewish Women's Prayers throughout the Ages

Aliza Lavie, Tefillat Nashim: Jewish Women's Prayers throughout the Ages

Prayers of Jewish Women: Studies of Patterns of Prayer in the Second Temple Period (review)

Prayers of Jewish Women: Studies of Patterns of Prayer in the Second Temple Period, by Markus McDowell. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006. 277 pp. euro54.00. This book is an elaborated Ph.D. dissertation submitted at Fuller Theological Seminary, and its main focus is clear from its title. It discusses some dozens of prayers that appear in a vast literature from non-Rabbinic Judaism from the second Temple Period: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the writings of Josephus and Philo. The common denominator of these prayers is that they are all attributed to women, either as reflecting a real history or a literary one. The purpose of the book is twofold; neither is less important than the other: liturgy on the one hand and perspectives in Antiquity on the other. McDowell studies prayers and not full books, but he is highly aware of modern study on those books in which the prayers he analyzes are incorporated. The study is a literary criticism combined with theology and studies. Its literary criticism is derived from the German biblical scholarship on the one hand and Israeli scholars on the other. The five chapters are organized very systematically. The first chapter is devoted to methodology, and it discusses prayers according to the following patterns: location, content, form, occasion, and perspective. Though perspective sounds highly relative, McDowell explains that he means: 1) gynocentric perspective; 2) feminine imagery and vocabulary and 3) gender-specific language. In other words, this perspective is none other than a sub-issue of content, and the main problem is to what extent words such as handmaid or female body parts disclose the gender of the text, if there is such, or even reveal the gender of the author. McDowell presents his findings, as well as former scholarship in this subject, in a very balanced way. After discussing methodology he writes on prayers attributed to females according to the books divided in time and origin: Palestinian or Diaspora origin. The analyzed prayers come from additions to Esther, Judith, Jubilees, Susanna, Tobit, Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Testament of Job, Joseph and Asenath, Third Maccabees, the works of Philo of Alexandria, Fourth Maccabees, second Baruch, Fourth Ezra, Sibylline Oracles, and the Writings of Josephus. After discussing each and every prayer in a very systematic way, including all sorts of statistical data that add to the findings, McDowell comes to Chapter 5: Summaries and Conclusions. It is true that almost all the texts analyzed by McDowell have already been subject to study, and what is even more frustrating is that almost none of his conclusions might be characterized as new. Moreover, McDowell is very cautious in his conclusions, and he is reluctant to say if any of the documents analyzed by him had been written by a woman. McDowell focuses on prayers from a specific era and thus he almost ignores biblical predecessors (see M. Bar-Ilan, Some Jewish Women in Antiquity, 1998), nor is he interested in more modern Jewish women's prayers (to which the term Rabbinic might be applied very loosely) (see Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs, 1998, and Aliza Lavie, Tefilat Nashim [Jewish Women's Prayers Throughout the Ages], 2005 [Hebrew]), as if all that data might not help in his analysis. …

A Band of Sisters: The Impact of Long-term Small Group Participation: Forty Years in a Women's Prayer and Bible Study Group

This article reports on a case study of a women's prayer and Bible study group that has met for over forty years. The report focuses on factors contributing to the group's longevity and vitality over time, how it changed over the years, and its impact on the lives of the women who participated in it. It also addresses how this long-term group survived the loss of members and leaders, how it has continued to be welcoming of new participants, and the perceived benefits and drawbacks of long-term groups compared with short-term groups. Ministry implications and questions for further research are raised.